Archives for December, 2010
Intellectual cooling
Posted by Josh Rosenau on December 17, 2010 Shorter Martin Cothran: More evidence for Global Warming: English winters are cold and snowy, therefore Al Gore is fat global warming is a hoax. Outside the fictional world of Martin Cothran – where Lost Cause mythology counts as history, as does Noah’s Ark – scientifically literate folks know that 2010 is shaping up to be…
Civility
Posted by Josh Rosenau on December 16, 2010 Stephen Post tells Science & Religion Today that civility isn’t the solution to the problems of modern politics: civility rests ultimately on deeper notions of respect for and love of humanity. Love is an affirming love of the other’s being, respect is a modulation of love, and civility is an expression of the respect, as…
Cothran defends the Confederacy
Posted by Josh Rosenau on December 14, 2010 Having defended Holocaust deniers and crusaded against gay parents, I shouldn’t be surprised that Martin Cothran, lobbyist for the Kentucky affiliate of Focus on the Family and occasional shill for the Disco. ‘Tute, would defend treason. In defending the secessionist States, Cothran mostly just whales away at a straw man, offering but one real person’s…
Ezra Klein is shrill
Posted by Josh Rosenau on December 13, 2010 …And rightly so. He wrote, after a vote to allow debate on repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell failed to clear a 60 vote plurality: DADT didn’t fail. The Senate did: The bill repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell didn’t fail: The Senate did. The bill got 57 votes, not 49. As Dylan Matthews pointed out,…
Egnor lays an egg; or Wrong to life
Posted by Josh Rosenau on December 12, 2010 Shortly after Michael Egnor launched his first defense of creationism at the Disco. ‘Tute’s blog, the wags at Panda’s Thumb coined the term “egnorance,” to describe “the egotistical combination of ignorance and arrogance.” It was funny, and remains so years later, because it’s true. Which brings us to Egnor’s reply to me, about the morality…
The deal on taxes, redux
Posted by Josh Rosenau on December 8, 2010 Steve Benen wraps up the late-breaking reactions to the tax deal, most surprisingly Sen. Mary Landrieu’s vigorous opposition: It seemed at least plausible to me that we’d see some Kabuki theater when it came to congressional Democrats’ reaction to the tax plan agreement. Perhaps they’d feign outrage, knowing that if Dems publicly expressed strong support,…
Christopher Maloney is a quack
Posted by Josh Rosenau on December 8, 2010 I know Christopher Maloney is a quack because this is how quacks act. PZ Myers wrote a blog post way back when pointing out that Maloney is a quack, a naturopathic “doctor” in Maine. He urged parents to skip vaccinating their kids, and to have them drink berry juice and take garlic pills instead. That…
The deal on taxes
Posted by Josh Rosenau on December 7, 2010 Lotsa people are pretty pissed right now. The President and Republicans in Congress cut a deal that will extend Bush-era tax cuts – taxes opposed vigorously by Democrats and fiscally sane Republicans at the time. In exchange for giving in to Republican demands on the tax cuts, the President got a payroll tax holiday (which…
Deep Thought
Posted by Josh Rosenau on December 7, 2010 I’m so glad I didn’t blog about the arsenic bacterial. The paper’s basic methods were probably flawed, and NASA won’t defend themselves. In short, we don’t know yet whether there’s even a story yet, let alone one deserving a press conference. “We cannot indiscriminately wade into a media forum for debate at this time,” senior…
Personhood
Posted by Josh Rosenau on December 5, 2010 Michael Egnor is trying to pick a fight over abortion with P.Z. Myers. Egnor is building a bog-standard argument that every human zygote has an inherent right to life, therefore abortion is immoral (the unargued assumption being that a woman’s right to life doesn’t really matter). It’s a reminder why the Discovery Institute, whose website…
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the